Literature

The Grand Valley English Department offers literature courses in a variety of fields. All English majors begin by taking foundation courses that are designed to foster a broad knowledge of the important writers of the British and American traditions. The department also offers courses that introduce students--both English majors and majors from around the university--to literature from around the world. Upper-level literature courses offer students the opportunity to focus in more depth on particular writers or time periods. The knowledge and skills students gain in these classes will prepare them for future careers in teaching, writing, or graduate school. At the same time, literature courses offer all students the opportunity to critically examine both their own and other cultures through the analysis of literature from all times and places.

American Literature |TOP|
In addition to the two foundation courses, English 225 and English 226, the English Department offers several period, topic and author-focused courses which examine American writing from the 15th to the 20th centuries. These course may include the works of such American authors as Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, Willa Cather and William Faulkner, and Zora Neale Hurston, Raymond Carver and Toni Morrison. Several upper-level courses the department offers in American literature focus specifically on the literature of American minorities, including works by Hispanic writers, Asian-American writers, the African-American Renaissance in the late twentieth-century, and the literature of the Holocaust. Courses include:

British Literature |TOP|
The English Department's British Literature courses range from the two foundation courses, English 220 and English 221, to more focused courses that deal with a single time period in British Literature or even a single author. These courses cover a time period of more than a thousand years of literary production, from Anglo-Saxon poetry, though the Renaissance, Restoration, Romantic, and Victorian eras, and into the twentieth century. Furthermore, the department offers Shakespeare courses on both a 200 and a 300 level, a focus which corresponds to the increasingly popular Shakespeare Festival held every Fall semester. Courses include:

World Literature |TOP|
Amid the conflicts and convergences of our globalized era, literature can serve as an ample window onto the histories, hopes, and burdens borne by our global neighbors. With our faculty's wide-ranging knowledge and experience of international writing, we in the English Department are committed to sharing and savoring with our students the fruits of the balance of stories among the world's peoples.

The English Department offers courses in international literature through which students can travel far beyond the borders of the United States. Regions and countries whose literatures we teach, research, and write about include Southern Africa, West Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, Canada, China, Indochina, Western Europe, and the Balkans. Many of us have grown up abroad (in Croatia, Canada, China, England, Gibraltar, Indonesia, and Taiwan) or have spent extended periods teaching or researching overseas in countries as varied as Bosnia, Chile, the Czech Republic, Guatemala, Nepal, and the Netherlands. Courses include: